Searching databases has become a routine functionality that may be used many times each day by users of devices such as desktop computers, personal computers and hand-held devices such as mobile phones and global positioning system (GPS) devices. Customers of such devices may make purchasing decisions based on reviews of retrieval times for searches, as well as for quality of relevance of search results returned in response to search queries. Thus, it may be desirable to provide faster and more efficient techniques for searching. For example, in order to speed up search functionality, some search engines may provide suggested result strings as a user types in a character string. For example, as an autocompletion, a search engine for text strings may suggest strings such as “Starbucks” or “Staples” as a user enters a prefix character substring “Sta” as part of an intended complete string of “Starbucks.” As another example, a user may enter “Sta” and a type-ahead search engine may similarly suggest strings such as “Starbucks” or “Staples” on-the-fly, as the user types. The user may then select the suggested string “Starbucks” to obtain more information for that string, without entering the complete string, thus saving the time of entering all the characters of the complete string.
GPS devices may provide information regarding a user's current location, as well as information regarding entities that may be “close” in geographic proximity to the user's current location. For example, a user may request information for finding a “closest” proximity Starbucks by entering the string “Starbucks” and requesting a search. The GPS device may then search for a match on the string and provide a list of Starbucks stores, sorted in decreasing order of proximity to the user's current location. Thus, the GPS device may provide a list of stores that are located, for example, one mile, two miles, three miles, and four miles, respectively, from the user's current location. The list of stores may be displayed either as a text listing, or as a geographic oriented display indicating the locations of the stores in relation to the user's current location. The user may then select one of the stores to obtain navigation information for travelling to the selected store. The GPS device may then provide an estimation of an arrival time or a distance to be travelled by the user to reach the selected store, as well as other information associated with the selected store, such as a telephone number.